::sip, sip:: aaaahhh.... Coffee, you are my morning friend. You require all of 2 minutes of semi-concious attention, and then you just give, give, give.
I was woken up the second time the phone had finished ringing, listened to the voicemail for the phone number I didn't recognize, then went and unlocked the back door so my neighbor could shower (the music major, not the one that works at the hospital). Am I doing this purely out of the goodness of my heart? No, not really. I'm hoping by the time the landlord comes to destroy my life, that my neighbors' apartment is finished and I can occasionally use their shower and toilet. Considering they don't have pipes coming out of the tub wall right now, there was no hope for them even boiling water and taking a rag bath today, as who knows if the drain is connected to anything. At least they had a flushing toilet by 8:30pm last night.
This brings me to thieves. This plumbing project has begun to steal people's sanity and humanity. Now, I haven't posted a picture of myself, but you should just know that my hair is about 2 feet long. I'm not joking. It's a great big blond sponge, and takes about 10 minutes to get completely wet for conditioning or washing (because no one with this much hair can shampoo every day or it turns into straw). When I first heard about the plumbing project, I was excited at the prospect of better hot water pressure for this very reason, but I have been, of course, disillusioned to my silly dreams of grandeur. The project started last month, at which point I went days and days without water, hot water, showers, dishes, sanity. Let me check the calendar...
The signs posted said work was to start August 4th. It rained that day, pretty hard, but that's not why they didn't start; they didn't have their permits in order. I didn't have water at all from Thursday, Aug. 5th through Saturday, Aug. 7th. Then Monday and Tuesday (Aug, 9th and 10th) I had no hot water and wasn't notified, followed by Wednesday Aug. 11th where I had no water at all and wasn't notified. There was Friday the 13th, no hot water, no notification, and THANKFULLY on Monday the 16th I didn't have hot water but was notified. Tuesday the 17th through Thursday the 19th there was no hot water and no notification. Then work just stopped for a while.
Now, for the first half of this hell, they were doing the main lines, so the water had to be shut off whenever there was a leak, pretty much to the whole building. Thankfully, there's only one family with kids in the building, but a lot of the other tenants are old- too old to go to the store to buy water. The dude who lives in the basement had a waterfall through his apartment when they did a crappy job at something or other, and even though he's literally at the bottom of it all, his apartment still isn't done, and his water pressure is like le mannequine pise, still, as of yesterday last I spoke with him.
So they resumed construction Monday the 13th, the day after my birthday, and destroyed an entire column of 3 apartments. They said one day per unit, then they said one day for each kitchen and each bathroom. So I guess they're sort of on schedule, as they have to come and put showers into the 3 units today, but being as the whole column is connected, the apartments have literally looked like Baghdad all week long, and will continue to until they're sure that the pipes aren't leaking and finally come back to plaster and paint. And by the way, I was told that my water wouldn't be affected by the construction in other units anymore, but that was a lie. Monday and Tuesday I had no hot water, no notification, and Wednesday the same. The old man who lives down stairs says to take the rent amount, divide it by 30 (days) and take off for every day I suffer annoyance or anything else. At those numbers, I totally overpaid the landlord for last month.
So the thievery part, yes. They're Time thieves. This project has stolen time, it's stolen money (like the one day I was an hour late to work, when I had a job, or like all the days I had to go without a shower, and was thereby a slightly less attractive and slightly more surly waitress). They start working early and wake me up with their noise, they give me headaches with the awful smell of soddering, and only one out of 5 of these guys speak English (an improvement, trust me).
How about some other thieves? I had a victory yesterday when I called Comcast and got them to knock my bill down from over $100 to $85 a month. It took all of 10 minutes of my time. The guy on the phone wanted to know why I would want to cancel my cable, and when I told him I was unemployed he suggested I apply for a position with them (maybe I'd get a discount?). When asked where he managed to take the money off, he said he knocked it off the internet. Now exactly why have I been paying so much for internet/cable, when this man literally typed in a few things and all of a sudden I'm saving $25? How come new customers get the best deals? How come they came out with a college package that costs next to nothing, less than 6 months after graduation!?
But back to this morning, while lying on the couch, debating making coffee of going back to sleep, the cats decided it was time to be fed. My little girl, channeling the spirits of ferrets and other little weasely, thieving creatures, jumped onto the coffee table and stole my book of rolling papers. She dropped them while wagging her tail and then jotted straight for the kitchen when I bent to pick them up. And people wonder why I have cats. They're the only thing that reminds me I'm still human. Maybe they keep their good spirits because they always have running water in their little cat fountain. I can't exactly bathe in that, now can I?
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